Council blasts school officials, OKs budget

Dirk Perrefort

Updated 11:53 pm, Tuesday, May 7, 2013

DANBURY -- City Council members chastised Danbury school officials Tuesday, with one councilman giving administrators and the Board of Education a failing grade on their budget presentations, before approving the $227 million budget for 2013-14.

Council member Colleen Stanley, who had led an education subcommittee that called for cutting the school district budget request by $1.25 million, said questions about school spending go unanswered "year after year" by committee members.

About 30 minutes into an hour-plus discussion, council member Warren Levy said he would give school officials "an F for budget preparations."

Some council members led an effort late in the meeting to cut the school budget by about $100,000 -- the estimated raises for administrators for the next fiscal year.

Council members said city department heads haven't received raises in years, while school officials continue to get increases despite a poor performance by the school system.

While some Democrats on the board complained that Danbury is near the bottom of the state in terms of spending per pupil, 162 of 169 municipalities, concerns about the school system's "lack of transparency" was echoed unilaterally by council members.

Stanley cited budget items from previous years in the school budget that haven't been updated, money for textbooks that was never spent for that purpose, and "unprepared" school officials who didn't have answers to council members' questions.

"We always talk about getting tough," she said. "Well, I am standing by my committee's recommendation. It's time to get tough."

Despite school officials' admonishments, the council rejected the education subcommittee's proposal to cut the proposed $2.5 million school budget increase proposed last month by Mayor Mark Boughton.

While much of the budget discussion focused on education spending, the council approved a city and school budget package for the next fiscal year that calls for a 3.3 percent spending increase, a total of about $227 million.

Despite the increased spending and a 19 percent increase in the city's tax rate because of last year's revaluation, Boughton has saidmost residential homeowners won't see an increase in their tax bill.

Residential properties fell more sharply in value than commercial properties, which will bear a larger portion of the property tax burden as a result, he said.

Boughton said late in the meeting Tuesday that he plans to "roll out" a new initiative in the coming weeks to address concerns raised by council members about education spending in the city.

Further details on the initiative weren't immediately available late Tuesday.